not a diary

Basically, I wish that you loved me,
I wish that you needed me,
I wish that you knew when I said two sugars, actually I meant three.

The above is taken from a stupid song I was listening to in the car on the way home. My car, I might have said before, is where I get all my thinking done. It's where I evaluate my day. It's where I let off steam, yell at the world, yell at the radio, and I have a good sing. It's where I become diana ross and have a stab at being leona lewis. In my car zooming home from work, nothing particularly matters except the journey from A to B.

That song comes to mind just because I've been thinking for a couple of days about wants, needs and desires. Why, as human beings we're destined not to want what we can have, but to want what we can't. Very recently I suppose I've started to realise what I actually want, and although i know it's relatively impossible, it appears I can't stop myself from falling into that pit... again. It seems my brain loves car-crash telly. It can't get enough. It sees a situation that it would probably be best to steer away from (or put a barbed wire fence around, even better) and it says 'ah... just a bit... go on' instead. At first it's this 'well, it won't hurt if you just... think it, nobody knows you're thinking it, do they'. Well, that's true, i suppose, but thoughts hurt the person thinking them, don't they. and it's got to the stage where it's beginning to hurt... me. over lunch today my friend said she thinks i 'concentrate on the impossible' because to focus on the possible would be scary. it's true that whenever love becomes highly possible, even probable, it is scary.

I don't have a particularly high opinion of myself. Recently I've been considering where my sights have been all this time. I used to enjoy chasing things and people that i felt were way beyond my reach. when i got those things and occassionally got those people then, the achievement felt greater, more significant. but of course, in reality, nobody wants to fight for all that stuff.
all i really want is for someone to care enough to want to know the stupid things about me (like when i say two sugars, i mean three) or that my lucky number is 27. or that i've got all the classic traits of a gemini. or that one of my favourite songs is 'and i love you so' by don mcclean. that i want that song to be the first dance at my wedding. that i like the sound of rain on windows, milk being poured onto cornflakes, and the ping of the bathroom light. that sweetcorn makes me vomit. that planes make me sick. that i can't shuffle cards. that fax machines freak me out. oh, and that i hate pete doherty.

and the question i suppose is... am i really meant to fight for all that stuff? does everything have to be a draining, gutwrenching experience? does destiny ever really come into play and say 'there you are!' or will i forever be walking into car crash situations trying to find my own slice of what's left?

anyway, i'll sign off with some words from that song i want at my wedding. it's simple enough.

and i love you so
people ask me how
how i lived til now
i tell them
'i don't know.'

night all

regrets

i suppose i flinched
when i found out the truth
flinched just a little
but thought
'i always knew'
you've never made it a secret
it was your every, other word,
for all this time.
yet it was the one thing you never said.

then as i was driving away
in the rain
it just swept itself up in me
all over again, and i thought
'i always knew'
what you were doing to me
but how could i ever admit it
i couldn't even let myself
pronounce the words.

instructions:
leave the past in the past
where it belongs

but the gentle trickle
keeps on coming back
and the doubts emerge
stronger than ever,
mixed up with the grit,
staining the windscreen.

i know now
i should never have let you in.

one wipe-
gone forever.

x

I was bemused this morning when I woke up to snow. It's March, so i guess by now it's meant to be spring. In fact, it's nearly april and my mind is drawn to my favourite poem - 'the waste land' by ts eliot. the first few lines are about how winter (and snow) is a protection from spring because when we get to spring all these unwanted feelings creep up on us. 'winter kept us warm, covering earth in forgetful snow' he says (or something like that). so, now that we're in spring, and it's snowing, maybe some of those feelings we'd all rather not have are being covered up? or at least, dulled down a bit?

that's not exactly the case for me, and i don't suppose it's true of other people. but, it's a good image (and one of the most famous in modern poetry), and one that i've written essays about. i'm teaching gcse english at the moment to a 16 year old bloke who would rather be somewhere else. every week we always seem to drift back to the same subject 'how to construct an argument' and i do my best to ration it out for him on paper. introduction, reasoning, linking sentence. paragraph 1, focus on language... and after a while it all feels a bit futile. your ability to construct a half decent argument surely comes from whether or not you understand what you're writing about. if the content is right, the structure tends to be, i guess. and that's something which i'm discovering not just through torturous anthologies of ted hughes, but through everything else.

things tend to go awry when the content isn't right. or when your energy gets focussed onto the wrong thing. and when you thought the content was right and it turns around and bites you on the arse, things get even more messy than they were before. i've experienced that too many times. it seems more often than not i plough my energy into things or people who were never destined to give me the same levels in return. either it's the wrong time in their lives, there just isn't a space for me, or they simply aren't on the same page. for the few that do give me the same things back, the limits are clear. i am not immune to slicing people away from me. and it's usually in self-defence and self-preservation.

the circuit is usually pretty clear. if a person lets me down, i forgive them. if they do it again, i forgive them again. the third time, i press the 'delete' button. and that really is 'it'. the only time it's not as 'cut and dry' as that is when i love the other person. that's when content mis matches structure and everything might as well be in pieces on the floor. for me, love is the only thing that leaves me with a flatpack wardrobe and no instructions. where love is involved i don't even have the tools for the trade. i can't press delete. and so the pain continues.

this exact situation happened to me a couple of years ago. the person i loved to the moon and back let me down so much, far beyond my usual thresholds, and i couldn't press delete. believe me, i tried. i couldn't preserve myself, i guess i was utterly exposed to it. i remember the moment when i figured out i'd been betrayed like it was yesterday. i can even recall the smell in the room, the sunlight on the coffee table, the hot cup of tea in my hand. my chance to press delete and walk away was there, and i couldn't take it.

over the course of time, wounds healed dramatically and i was able to have whole weeks without thinking about this person. this extended itself to months until i felt able to spend time with them again and not feel the pinch of the past on the back of my neck. and so i did. and the result? now i am in the opposite situation. the shoe, if you like, is well and truely on the other foot. two years after the flat pack wardrobe lost its instruction set, and they are standing right in front of me saying 'i get it now, i know! i'm here!!!' and you know what? it just isn't working. they can stamp their feet all they want but i just can't bring myself to join them. for once, my heart and my head are united. clearly it's a 'no'.

that moment when i could have walked away, pressed delete, still plays on me. i think i can conclude from it that we never really forgive people who are fully aware of their power over us, but hurt us anyway. as soon as we are able to put things into perspective, line the content and the structure back up, the anger sweeps in. and i have stayed angry, underneath my ability to see them and everything to be 'fine'. underneath that facade i'm angry that i was made to feel so worthless. last night i told this person 'it's a no'. and when they asked why, i said 'because i don't forgive you.'

and i think that's fair enough.

I have nowhere else I feel I can write this minor-rant. I always said 'I won't use my blog to yell at the world' but today I would have liked to run out of my office, stand on the steps, and shout at the top of my lungs the following things... so I'm going to shout them here, as shouting them in public probably would have turned one too many heads. If I don't put them somewhere, at least, they will just hang in my head and block almost everything good.

1.) I am not too young for this job!

2.) I am nobody's PA!

3.) I am doing my fucking best!

It's amazing how stressed and down-trodden I sounded in my last blog, reading it back. I'm trying to think of things that have happened since, or the best way to put them onto the page. Ah, a list, that's probably best. Here goes.

1.) Things have got a little better at work. I am looking for other jobs every weekend but nothing has really come to light as of yet, and particularly nothing where i could have completely varied days of sitting in starbucks discussing the best way to strategically plan a training program one minute, and the next minute be lugging a giant box half way across campus swearing about how heavy it is and hugging a bloke in a tiger suit. I've made myself a little happier by negotiating a huge investment from my boss, a better salary, a decent sized office, and some more hands to the mill. I wouldn't say things are 'great', things are seriously tiring and i continue to give up valued weekends and evenings while colleagues look at me like 'yeah? and?', but i'm not dreading every day as much as i was.

2.) the focus has shifted away from work a little, and onto my personal life which has basically been neglected in favour of my desk. my personal life and my working life sort of got themselves mixed together. i recognise now that i had put myself in a very dodgy situation and i am seriously relieved things seemed to have straightened themselves out. i was caught between a rock and a hard place in the most literal sense, i suppose, and moral dilemas like that don't come around very often. i'm still left with an over-riding sense of anger that the situation happened in the first place, but i think that will pass with time and positivity.
i'm not sure whether i have the same levels of trust that i used to keep for all the people i'm close to. now-a-days i doubt them much more than i ever did but i don't think there's anything wrong with being a bit more guarded and insecure.

a while back in my blog i continuously mentioned 'finding out who stays there when the chips are down'. well i suppose they are down now, and i'm watching to see where things will settle and when the ripples will stop.